How to be a customer-centric company

How to be a customer-centric company

Thought Leadership

How to be a customer-centric company

In the simplest terms, customer centricity is about listening to and learning from your customers. It’s about leveraging the information and knowledge you have about your customers to guide your business in a way that is resonant with and meaningful to them.

Customer centricity is about more than a broad-strokes sense of customer needs. It’s about granular, detailed insight into every customer’s unique preferences, so you can provide the optimal product, service and overall experience.

Making meaningful connections

Decades ago, customers had far fewer choices. This meant that companies could get by with offering only mediocre service and customer experience. That has all changed. With customers in the driver’s seat, brands need to improve the way they serve their customers.

In short, today, no matter the industry you’re in, customer centricity must be at the center of your business strategy if you’re going to drive profit, ensure loyalty and gain a competitive edge.

Want to boost your customer centricity right now? Here are a few key pointers:

  • Strive to know your customers better, every day. The more you know about your customers, the better you can anticipate their needs and preferences. That in turn opens up new business opportunities.
  • Understand your customers’ goals and desires. To forge a deeper relationship with your customers, focus on how your product or service forms part of your customers’ lives. Is it helping your customers achieve their goals? Could a small change make your customers feel more supported, more understood?
  • Prioritise customer retention. Selling to existing customers is far easier and less expensive than selling to new ones. How can you use your data to serve your customers better, so they stay with you for longer? The right data not only gives you insights into how to keep your customers happy, but can also illuminate areas of risk that might be silently damaging your company.
  • Make sure you have the right technology, so that information gathering is a seamless, integrated process of daily business activity.

How Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can help your business become more customer centric

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is designed to make understanding your customers easier. Leading companies around the world rely on Dynamics 365 Customer Insights for the insights that help keep their businesses thriving.

With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, you can:

  • Get a complete, 360-degree view of every customer with digital and cross-channel analytics
  • Optimize the customer journey with out-of-the-box and custom interactive reports
  • Predict customer needs by unlocking powerful insights using prebuilt AI models, or use custom models for deeper insights.
  • Connect your entire stack to harness data and drive informed decisions, automate processes, and personalise customer engagement across channels.

Today, all sustainable, future-proof brands are building themselves around their customers.  Becoming meaningfully customer centric is not only a necessary strategy for becoming an iconic brand, but a lasting one, too.

To learn more about what Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can do for your business, get in touch with us today.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Ignites with new enhancements

Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Ignites with new enhancements

Dynamics and Power Platform

Microsoft Dynamics 365- Ignites with new enhancements

Microsoft Ignite 2021 took place from the 2nd to 4th March and was attended virtually by over 45,000 people around the world.

Along with dozens of announcements there were a number of exciting enhancements made to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite.

Have a look at what we believe are the four with the biggest impact.

 

Real-time customer journey orchestration

 

Have you shopped on a website, found something you like, left to do something else and then received an email to say that the product you were interested in is now offered to you at a 10% discount?

This is real-time marketing and retargeting that is going to be a feature within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Dynamics 365 Marketing

Real-time customer orchestration

This is a move away from segment-based marketing to real-time interactions.  This allows you to create a personalised customer journey for each individual.

To further increase the effectiveness of this, Microsoft are embedding artificial intelligence into this process so that the right offers, images and videos are displayed within the real-time marketing communication.

These real-time messages can be triggered by workflow and Microsoft Automate within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.

By using real-time customer orchestration you can reduce cart abandonment by 6,5% (MotoCMS) and increase conversion rate by up to 25% (SocialMediaToday).

 

Real-time action from customer voice surveys

 

By sticking to the real-time theme it was also announced at Microsoft Ignite that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will now include real-time action from customer voice surveys.

Have you responded to a customer service survey after a negative experience and had someone contact you days later – or worse – not at all?

Real-time actions will now be available from a customer survey where an agent will get notified directly after your comment and you will get a call moments later.  It can also be configured that a discount be sent to you, or another win-back initiative, be sent directly after the interaction.

 

Customer Self-service field service scheduling

 

Microsoft is really enhancing every aspect of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the two enhancements to Field service are that customers will be able to do their own scheduling and rate the work of the technician.

Scheduling a technician can be a tedious time consuming activity that often involves phoning a contact centre.  Now customers will be able to do scheduling directly from their own device which will provide a more personalised experience, reduce scheduling errors and rescheduling events.

Customers will also be able to get automated service visit reminders, track their engineer in real-time and submit direct feedback on the quality of the work.

89% of customers want an “Uber-like” technician tracking service, with 86% willing to pay more for a better scheduling process. (CSG International)

 

Embedded Microsoft Teams within sales – including chat

 

Microsoft Teams is being tightly integrated to Microsoft Dynamics Sales with sales people now having the ability to chat with customers and colleagues directly within Microsoft Dynamics Sales.

Microsoft Teams embedded directly within Microsoft Dynamics Sales

 

Not only is chat directly within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales but you can also embed a Microsoft Teams dialler experience as well, as well as an extensible video and audio meeting experience.

 

Hundreds of enhancements within Microsoft Dynamics 365

 

Apart from the fantastic enhancements announced at Microsoft Ignite there are also hundreds of enhancements contained within the 2021 Release Wave 1 Plan.

This document is 347 pages packed with new features covering marketing, sales, service, field service, finance & operations, human resources, customer insights, customer voice, industry solutions and Power Platform.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is truly on fire and the aim is to empower your organisation to serve your customers and provide excellent customer experiences.

Find out how you can get these enhancements!
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Drive personalized interactions with real-time customer journey orchestration

Drive personalized interactions with real-time customer journey orchestration

Marketing

Drive personalized interactions with real-time customer journey orchestration

Faced with a historic level of social and business disruption, companies have been forced to respond quickly and strategically to meet the challenge. To help address this challenge, and elevate customer experiences, we are introducing real-time customer journey orchestration capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.

 

Elevate customer experiences

Connecting with people has never been more important, and customer expectations have never been higher. Customer tolerance for disjointed experiences, or even worse, tone-deaf communications is unacceptable. Organizations that deliver better end-to-end customer experiences (CX) are taking share. Despite a decade of discussion about the importance of CX, many companies have failed to elevate their experiences to the level desired.

Beyond the human value of great experiences, elevated experiences are critical to driving business value—enabling growth and driving brand equity, preventing churn, and enabling higher marketing and customer engagement return on investment.

Dynamics 365 Marketing is working to revolutionize how organizations address these challenges to enable teams such as marketing, sales, customer success, commerce, or customer service to create engaging and impactful customer-led experiences.

We are announcing real-time customer journey orchestration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing will be released for preview as part of the April 2021 release wave 1 updates in Europe and North America. This landmark innovation brings together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation and is designed to help businesses:

  • Engage customers in real-time
  • Win customers and earn loyalty faster
  • Personalize customer experiences with AI
  • Build customer trust with a unified, adaptable platform

Plus, commercial Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 customers will get six months of free access to Dynamics 365 Marketing at no additional cost. We’ll have more details on this offer to share soon, along with eligibility details, and we are excited to see you reap the benefits of these solutions together.

 

Moving from segment-based marketing to real-time interactions

Customer journey orchestration helps you make the next great leap in customer experiences: from segment-based marketing campaigns to moments-based interactions, creating a personalized, holistic customer journey for each individual. This enables you to strengthen your relationships at every touchpoint across both digital and physical, breaking down walls between marketing, sales, commerce, and service organizations. Dynamics 365 Marketing responds to customer actions during the journey.

Win customers and earn loyalty

In the highly competitive technology market, HP’s brand is built on its high-quality products and differentiated service. Loyalty is critical to enabling business performance (Customer Lifetime Value, Gross Margin, etc.) and every support call is an opportunity. HP is working to turn support interactions into personalized engagement moments using Dynamics 365 Marketing with customer journey orchestration. This will allow HP to break down longstanding data silos, better engage customers in real-time with the most impactful messaging, and leverage AI-driven recommendations.

“With customer journey orchestration in Dynamics 365 Marketing, our agents will gain a real-time 360-degree view of each customer and their support experience,” explains Brian Johnston, Business Architect, HP. “We’ll be making the most of our customers’ time and treating them with empathy and understanding. It makes HP feel real to the customer, and it makes the customer feel real to HP”

The result will be an enhanced and highly-personalized customer service experience that improves quality of service, builds customer lifetime loyalty, and also saves the company money by shortening the time spent solving problems.

 

Personalize customer experiences with AI to enable more engaging content

Authoring impactful content quickly and easily is a big challenge. With built-in AI recommendations for content, channels, customer segmentation, and analytics, companies can be sure to deliver the right message. The reimagined email editor helps select and deliver the best image, video, document, or fragment using AI. A new centralized asset library allows you to search, version, manage and use AI to tag your digital assets.

Journey authoring is also assisted by AI with targeted customer segments, channel optimization, and experimentation. As customers engage, the customer journey adapts and responds to interactions with relevant content driving further engagement.

We’re engineering AI throughout Dynamics 365 Marketing to help you create engaging and impactful messages faster. Powerful experimentation capabilities and analytics track progress towards your business objectives, helping you to exceed business goals.

Campari raises the bar for delivering customer experiences

The Campari Group, home to some of the world’s iconic alcoholic spirit brands, knows how to create great brand experiences and is always working to deepen its relationships with customers. To gain a 360-degree customer view and enhance the personalization of its marketing, sales, and customer service efforts, Campari Group deployed Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing. With AI-driven recommendations and customer journey orchestration, Campari Group can now personalize real-time marketing messages for maximum impact across all customer touchpoints.

“Customer journey orchestration enables contextually relevant and consistent real-time conversations with every customer across all interaction points,” explains Chad Niemuth, Vice President, Global IT – Marketing and Sales. “We can more precisely align marketing messages for each communication channel to gain the greatest impact. We see the effects in in-store sales and also in e-commerce, which is particularly important during COVID.”

Within weeks, Campari Group connected all the data points in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and deployed its first email marketing automation campaign against those segments in the United States. Roll-out in the United Kingdom and Australia followed shortly.

Stronger connections with Microsoft Teams

The dramatic shift to online meetings and virtual events has made it even more important for event managers to easily use Teams and Dynamics 365 Marketing.

At Microsoft Ignite, we announced new and updated features that enable you to run rich webinars and events, true to your brand with a professional experience for attendees. We also announced the ability of Teams to easily follow up with event attendees with Dynamics 365 Marketing. This allows you to continue connecting with attendees, nurturing them into loyal customers.

Turn insights into action

Microsoft’s customer data platform, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, makes it easy to unify customer data, identify high-value customer segments, or those likely to churn. When you combine it with Dynamics 365 Marketing, you can engage customers in a personalized way and in real-time to drive meaningful actions. Seamlessly use segments from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to target marketing campaigns. Personalize content with rich profile information, and create individual journeys based on customer history and preferences. With the addition of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you build custom AI models and improve relevancy with advanced segmentation and targeting that can then be brought to life with Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Learning customers’ preferences and sentiment is critical to personalizing engagement. Today, we are also announcing real-time survey capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice that enable you to adapt customer journeys or trigger relevant communications. For example, if a customer is not satisfied with a specific product feature or service, the response can quickly stop marketing campaigns while also notifying an account manager for personalized follow-up.

Together, these connected applications help companies personalize moments that matter across all touchpoints in a customer’s journey and build deeper customer relationships with more meaningful engagement across both digital and physical channels.

 

Agencies bring customer-first approach to journey creation

Developing highly impactful and personalized experiences across the customer journey requires a fresh approach. We are excited to be working with a number of leading agencies that have expertise in transforming customer experiences to deliver stronger connections to leading brands and measurable business impact.

“VMLY&R is excited to partner with Microsoft, helping empower organizations to reimagine and transform customer experiences. Harnessing the power of AI, data, and insights to create connected customer and brand experiences have never been more important. We look forward to collaborating with Microsoft and the Dynamics 365 team to deliver amazing customer experiences for organizations around the world,” says David Mitchell, Chief Technology Officer, VMLY&R.

Agencies such as VMLY&R (a WPP company) and Kin + Carta use creativity, technology, and culture to create experiences that engage customers one-on-one across every touchpoint from marketing through service, across both digital and physical experiences.

“As people have more and more ways to interact with brands, it’s never been more vital to deliver a consistent, seamless experience for customers and to look towards the future to find innovative ways to meet their needs,” says Rob McGowan, Managing Director of Edit, part of the Kin+Carta connective. “It’s this challenge that we believe the new customer journey orchestration features in Dynamics 365 Marketing are ideally placed to answer.”

Learn more and get started

To learn more about how your organization can elevate your customer experiences, visit the Dynamics 365 Marketing webpage and contact us to explore all capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing.

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A partnership to empower marketing for a brilliant customer experience

A partnership to empower marketing for a brilliant customer experience

Digital Transformation

The CRM Team and Simple join forces!

Empowering marketing, to deliver a brilliant customer experience

London and South Africa, March 04, 2021: The CRM Team, expert implementers of world-leading customer engagement technology, and Simple MRM Ltd, enablers of result-driven marketing and customer experience, announce a favourable partnership.

The alliance is a natural fit between two Microsoft partners focused on transforming the customer experience through technology. Properly coordinated sales and marketing improves engagement and advocacy with a brand, ultimately increasing the lifetime value of the customer.

The CRM Team brings together tons of customer data with AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365, to create a single customer record, providing sales, marketing and service teams with unique insights to take action, automate repetitive processes and engage customers like never before. As experts in project and change management, the team deliver fastest time to value for customers investing in Microsoft technologies.

Simple empowers teams further as the command centre for managing marketing resources, delegating jobs at pace to build campaigns that wow customers, with content that’s brand compliant, consistent and approved by business leaders. This governed material is readily available to the wider team to strengthen all customer engagements, increase productivity and unleash more effective marketing.  

“Our partnership with Simple is designed with our customers’ marketing teams in mind. We consistently heard of specific challenges that marketing teams face, and these were only made worse during the pandemic. The solution from Simple helps us address these challenges. And the insight, expertise and engagement model provided by Nick and his team will ensure that we can instantly transform how marketing teams collaborate, innovate and adapt.”

Paul Slade, CEO- The CRM Team

Simple is your command centre for managing marketing resources, budgets, assets, campaigns and customer experiences. As a single central tool for directing marketing operations, Simple lets you focus on creating brilliant marketing and customer experiences.

 

“Simple is built on Microsoft to empower all things marketing, but the enterprise solution has wide-reaching benefits across all departments, giving stakeholder visibility and enabling marketing, sales and service teams alike. The CRM Team are the perfect partner to support customers in delivering their targeted business outcomes through leveraging technology, to jointly transform business operations.” 

Aden Forrest, CEO – Simple MRM Ltd

Deliver a brilliant customer experience!

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Bill Gates and Chewbacca Believe In The Magic of Software

Bill Gates and Chewbacca Believe In The Magic of Software

Thought Leadership

Bill Gates and Chewbacca Believe In The Magic of Software

It was a Friday. The 27th of June 2008 to be exact.

Bill Gates said, “10100011000” to everyone at Microsoft. That’s “Bye” in binary for all the non-techies among you. It was his last day as CEO at Microsoft, and as Bill took the stage, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

People cried tears of sadness and tears of joy.

The tears of joy weren’t because Bill was leaving, they were thanks to the video Bill and his team made about his last days at Microsoft.

Matthew McConaughey, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Al Gore, and even Barack Obama, all played their part. But our personal favourite was when Bill and Chewbacca agree that you should “Never doubt the magic of software.”

Watch the video here:

At The CRM Team, we listened to Bill and Chewbacca: We don’t ever doubt the magic of software! We’re always amazed at what Microsoft’s R&D team delivers. And we get to work with those magical applications every single day.

We use Dynamics 365, Azure and the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agent) to make magic for our customers in South Africa, the UK, Holland and the USA.

Have a look at some of our case studies below:

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The CRM Story

The CRM Story

Thought Leadership

What is CRM?

HINT: It’s not just about software.

Many people think that CRM is software. But it’s far more than that. 

Customer Relationship Management is about blending technology and strategy to guarantee great customer experience.

Customers are at the centre of every business. Whether you are B2C, B2B, B2B2C, etc. your business success depends on the experience your customer has with you. In every business this experience is shaped at four customer touch points:

1.  Marketing

2.  Sales

3.  Delivery

4.  Service

It’s not sufficient to be good at two or three of these touch points. Your relationship with your customer is dependent on all four.

A bitter let down

A guy in our office recently ordered a cell phone from a tele-sales company. Their marketing was excellent and they had created a strong brand that he trusted. The salesman on the phone was very knowledgeable. His easy manner made buying a simple process.

But when it came to receiving his phone, he had a different experience. On opening his package, he realised the phone was completely different to the one he ordered. When he contacted the company to correct things, nobody seemed to care. It took him a long time to get the company to deliver the phone he’d actually bought. When they eventually did, he vowed never to buy from them again.

Customers are lost through experiences like this.

It doesn’t matter how good certain teams in your business are, without consistency across the four touch points, you’ll always hemorrhage customers and revenue. This is where Customer Relationship Management comes in.

CRM gives you this consistency. A good, functioning CRM system provides great customer experience – right across your business. And because customers have a good relationship with you, you’ll be able to keep hold of them. This creates up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. Selling to current customers is far easier than attracting new ones.

Great customer relationship management doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey. But it’s a journey every company needs to be on.

Let us help you

At The CRM Team, we are experts on this journey. Whatever stage you have reached, we can assist you to get to the next one. See which stage you are at.

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Omni-channel vs Multi-channel. Is there a difference?

Omni-channel vs Multi-channel. Is there a difference?

Customer Service, Popular

Omni-channel vs Mutli-channel. Is there a difference? 

The words multi-channel and omni-channel are often used interchangeably by experts and consultants alike, but is there a difference? We believe there is.

 

Multi-channel refers to the fact that organisations interact with their customers over multiple channels including email, phone calls or social media. The problem with this is the transition between these channels isn’t smooth. As a consumer we find ourselves in a position where we have to explain and re-explain our situation or requirements, wasting time and building up irritation. 

 

Omni-channel, on the other hand, means there is channel awareness that allows for smooth transitioning between interactions. If I receive an SMS recommending a specific product or promotion and call the contact centre to take up the offer, the agent is immediately aware that I’m calling because of the promotion. They would also be aware if I wanted to complain.

 

Being constantly connected on digital platforms has changed how businesses need to interact with customers. Let’s take a look at the benefits an omni-channel solution could bring to your business.

 

1. Increase customer satisfaction

Customers want to interact with your business online, through a call centre, on social media, in-store, and they want these interactions to be consistent and immediate. An omni-channel approach prevents your customer from getting lost in a constant loop of communication with no resolution.

Nothing irritates your customers more than not having their voices heard. This happens when a customer phones your call centre, but they don’t have the information to resolve the call and so they email the service desk and then they might be pushed back to the call centre. With an omni-channel approach your business can make first call resolutions a reality, by having consistent and accurate customer data.

 

2. Make informed decisions with a data-driven view of your client

Understand your customers better, identify untapped market opportunities and make smarter business decisions. Omni-channel is about helping customers at the right time, with the right product and the right advice.

 

Using customer insights will help you track behavioural patterns in how and where your customers find information, and what products or services they want to buy. The data you have on hand will also allow you to ask better questions, and these questions will drive improved processes.

 

3. Reduce operational costs

Consistent and relevant data also allows you to measure operational efficiency where it counts. Omni-channel allows you to automate standardised processes. Automation could reduce call centre agent handling time, help reduce time to resolution and in turn reduce operational costs while increasing customer interactions.

 

4. Improve productivity and collaboration

Remove information silos between departments to encourage collaboration. Omni-channel brings together data from many sources, into one view for client-facing teams.

 

Gone are the days where the person who has been with a company for the longest usually holds all client information. This causes key man dependency and is a business risk. An omni-channel system removes this risk by giving the people in your business a full view of your clients.

 

Give your business the advantage with an omni-channel system that can increase profitability through increased customer satisfaction. Why not get in touch with us to see how we can partner to create a consistent customer experience.

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Prepare for change – Dynamics 365 Unified Interface is here!

Prepare for change – Dynamics 365 Unified Interface is here!

Dynamics 365, What's New

Prepare for change – Dynamics 365 Unified Interface is here!

Your experience with Dynamics 365 is about to change – the Unified Interface is here. This responsive experience for Dynamics 365 is becoming the primary and only experience for users, replacing WebClient. Here are the five things you should know about the sleek new Unified Interface to help you adapt to this change.

Unified Interface features

  1. Consistent responsive experiences

You now have consistent and equal functionality across all channels, from your computer through to mobile. What you see as an experience on your mobile device will be what you see and access on your computer. This consistency allows you to manage your client relationships and processes at any time, and on any device.

  1. Enhanced timeline control

Timeline control replaces the activities wall within your forms. You can configure the timeline control to only show the information you want to, such as only notes or only phone calls. While the visual filtering capability allows you to drill down into your data, giving you a quick and accurate view of your client interactions.

 

  1. Visually engaging dashboards and charts

You can display and access information in visually rich dashboards and charts to better engage with your business. This visualisation through custom controls adapts across all devices, giving you easy accessibility to valuable client information.

  1. Tabs have made a comeback

The Unified Interface is moving back to the tabbed experience for easier navigation. Having these tabs visible at the start of the form’s loading is a huge help – especially with forms that are heavy with data and client information.

  1. Upgrades to suit needs

The Unified Interface will be constantly updated with new features and optimised for enhanced client experiences. These upgrades are automatically made, so keep a lookout for new features.

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Better service from a bot? How A.I. is remaking customer service

Better service from a bot? How A.I. is remaking customer service

AI & Data Analytics

Better service from a bot? How A.I. is remaking customer service

For years, the human touch was considered the cornerstone of great customer service. Friendliness, a helpful attitude – it’s easy to imagine.

But can machines augment this and help make customers even happier?

A recent study from McKinsey identified marketing and sales as among the top areas that will soon be transformed by A.I.:

‘A.I. technologies are finding applications across the value chain, but some parts of the value chain are getting more attention than others… customer service as well as operations and product development, all tend to use the most commonly cited A.I. applications.’ 1

Many think A.I. is still an aspirational technology, but the numbers reveal that it’s a revolution already up and running. Consider some of the numbers:

‘78% of brands say they have already implemented or are planning to implement artificial intelligence … by 2020 to better serve customers. With regards to chatbots, which are in many ways the most recognisable form of A.I., 80% of sales and marketing leaders say they already use these in their CX or plan to do so by 2020.’ 2

 

‘By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.’3

 

A.I. and, in particular, machine learning not only helps make self-service interfaces more intuitive but anticipates specific customer needs by learning from context, chat history and preferences.

Getting down with data

A major reason for A.I.’s edge when it comes to keeping customers smiling? It’s all down to data – and the ability to process and make sense of it rapidly.

Simply put, machines can locate and process information far quicker than we can. Given the vast quantities of both incoming and outgoing information a typical customer service department has to deal with digital tools provide a genuine edge.

Audio calls. Live chats. Troubleshooting queries. Service scheduling. Maintenance requests. Machines can do it better and faster – and they don’t need any breaks.

More than this, A.I.-enabled customer service tools can:

  • Gather and learn from information
  • Define customer behaviours
  • Identify customers’ frequent decisions and preference types
  • Provide solutions and suitable products based on feedback
  • Provide proactive alert messages
  • Suggest personalised offers and discounts for each unique customer
  • Offer real-time support in the form of uniquely curated FAQs or blogs
  • Help lessen customer complaints and abandon rates

Personalisation perfected

Today, all great customer service centres on personalisation. It’s based on understanding a customer, their history with a company and their unique needs. This means being reactive to both what’s happened in the past, as well as understanding how to help shape the best outcomes for that customer in the future. But its also about maintaining an ongoing, value-adding relationship, and not just coming into the picture when its time to make a sale.

With complete access to customer information and buying history, A.I. helps make this process – of building and maintaining relationships – smart. More than this, A.I. is always 100% brand consistent. So customers know what to expect, every time they make contact. A real trust builder.

Future forward

Today, companies can no longer focus only on customer satisfaction post-sale. It’s about providing ongoing, meaningful and helpful interaction, and crafting amazing, personalised and highly relevant experiences. A.I. is the driver behind that personalisation process. The more relevant an offer or advice is to a customer, the more cared for that customer feels.

In this way, A.I. helps turn everything from a quick query to the sales process itself into a great customer service experience. Why? Customers are presented with a range of tailored options that speak intelligently to their unique needs.

Today, get customer experience wrong and you push your customers into your competitors’ hands. Do it right and you build brand advocates.

It’s about keeping up, keeping an open mind, and listening to what today’s consumers want. And when it comes to a better, more personalised service, A.I. technology is what you need.

Want to see how you can deliver exceptional customer service? Check out an A.I.-infused customer service solution.

 

References
1.https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Advanced%20Electronics/Our%20Insights/How%20artificial%20intelligence%20can%20deliver%20real%20value%20to%20companies/MGI-Artificial-Intelligence-Discussion-paper.ashx
2.  https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/s/delivery_production/docs/FY16h1/doc35/CXResearchVirtualExperiences.pdf
3. http://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/customer-360/C360_2011_brochure_FINAL.pdf

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Marketing Automation is What Your Business Needs, Right Now

Marketing Automation is What Your Business Needs, Right Now

Dynamics and Power Platform

 

Marketing Automation is What Your Business Needs – Right Now

 

$25 billion! If you are not part of this spend chances are your competition is! An April 2018 report from global research agency Forrester concluded:

‘As digital marketing complexity increases, more marketers are embracing automation tools to improve efficiency and speed to market. In our first Marketing Automation Technology Forecast … we expect global spending on marketing automation tools to surpass $25 billion by 2023, implying a 14% annual growth rate.’1

Personalisation, reactivity, relevance: words like these get thrown around a lot in marketing today. The reason: giants like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Amazon are changing what customers – including yours – are coming to expect from their daily digital experiences. Gone is the one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. In its place: relevance and reactivity – with a high degree of personalisation.

The Forrester report highlighted:

  1. Spending on marketing technology is increasing – 55% of global marketers planning to increase their expenditure on marketing technology in 2019.
  2. Personalisation enhances customer experience. More than that, it is now the norm:

‘Customers reward firms for personal, relevant, and value-added individualized experiences. As personalisation becomes the standard, consumers now expect this level of engagement across channels and digital touchpoints. Marketing automation technologies can help marketers scale their personalisation efforts.’

Slick, speedy, insightful and intelligent, top-tier marketing automation tools are remaking how marketers both reach and talk to their customers.

 

What is marketing automation exactly?

At base, marketing automation is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that allows companies to run massive marketing campaigns with ease. No mess. No fuss. No unnecessary admin. More than that, marketing automation means companies can track and nurture leads at the touch of a button, sync customer information into a centralized hub and reach prospects in new, tailored, automated ways.   In a nutshell: gone are manual processes. Ditto for misaligned marketing and sales goals. In their place is a single solution that handles all elements of the marketing process, leaving marketers free to focus on the creative and relationship-based elements of their roles, not the admin burdens.

What can I do with a marketing automation tool?

It’s all about accuracy and ease. Marketing automation covers:

  • Social marketing
  • Landing page creation
  • Campaign management
  • Prediction and scoring
  • Lead management
  • Social marketing
  • Email marketing

More specifically, marketing automation is about:

  • Reaching out to prospects – With automated, customized messages across email, web, social media, and text.
  • Qualifying leads – Understanding where customers are in the purchase journey, and providing relevant information.
  • Suggesting the right products at the right time – By storing purchase histories, customer information and methods of contact, marketing automation means customers receive relevant suggestions – not the same old shot-in-the-dark product recommendations.
  • Information sharing between marketing and sales – By sharing insights gathered during the marketing process with sales teams, the entire organization becomes more reactive, responsive and attuned to customers’ needs.
  • Running multichannel marketing campaigns with ease – Marketing automation allows organisations to set up orchestrated email marketing, web landing pages, webinars, phone calls, events and more.
  • Leveraging the power of social media – More and more of our time is spent on social media channels. Marketing automation helps companies not only build up a robust social presence, but source new leads, and engage meaningfully with prospects.
  • Hand over sales-ready leads – Marketing automation allows companies to identify which leads are ready for sales engagement, with lead scoring and sales readiness grades.

Customer journeys are the sum of individual personalized experiences with a brand. With marketing automation, companies can tailor every interaction based on customer data to create resonant, seamless journeys through every brand touchpoint.

Upping the upside

The benefits of marketing automation are many, but here’s a snapshot:

  • The ability to both automate and streamline the segmentation process to find the right audiences rapidly and at scale.
  • Messaging and landing pages are tailored automatically using customer profiles.
  • Creating relevant and personalised experiences becomes possible, with a few simple clicks.

A great marketing automation tool’s other great feature is what it lets marketers know about campaign performance. Integrated analytics allows companies unprecedented insight into how their campaigns are performing. Meaning ROI is never murky, and the result of campaign spending is always crystal clear.

The sum-up

With marketing automation, companies can effectively and meaningfully connect with customers through their purchasing journey, no matter how far along they are, be it acquisition or advocacy.   Providing great, relevant content to customers in the way they prefer not only drives sales, but helps turn prospects to brand advocates.

Best of all, it’s automated. And happens in a snap.

Do you want to learn more about marketing automation? Read what our marketing automation solution offers you.

References 

1 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/global-marketing-automation-spending-will-reach-25-billion-by-2023/

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